China’s National Health Commission warned that COVID-19 is showing signs of spreading again in the new year, the Youth Daily and the Korean Central News Agency reported on the 15th.
According to the media, the Sanitation and Health Committee said at its first newspaper presentation of the year the previous day that although influenza is now the main respiratory disease, the risk of COVID-19 spreading again is increasing.
Mi Feng, spokesperson for the Health and Health Commission, said that although the number of fever patients visiting medical institutions nationwide has decreased somewhat since January 1, the number of COVID-19 infected cases is increasing again, mainly due to the JN.1 mutation.
Wang Dayan, director of the National Pandemic Influenza Center, Virus Research Institute of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, explained that according to expert research, China will continue to see a pattern of replacement and epidemics of various respiratory pathogens, and that influenza viruses will spread especially in the short term.
At the same time, Director Wang Dayan pointed out that the possibility of a rebound of COVID-19 is increasing due to complex factors such as the continued influx of COVID-19 JN.1 mutations from overseas and a gradual decline in the level of human immunity.
Wang Guichang, director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the First Hospital of Peking University, said that respiratory diseases such as swine flu A and B, COVID-19, and adenovirus are prevalent in China in the winter, and that immunity to these infections lasts for a long time. They said that if you don’t go, you could get infected repeatedly.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the 10th that the gathering of people for the year-end and New Year holidays accelerated the global spread of COVID-19 by the JN.1 mutation in December last year. .
According to WHO data, the number of global COVID-19 cases in December 2023 was close to 10,000. Compared to November, the number of hospitalized patients increased by 42%, and the number of critically ill patients receiving intensive isolation treatment increased by 62%.
Source: Donga
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